Inside the Music with CID

Exclusive Interview Electric Zoo 2017

by Kristine Kennedy and Michael Beas

His name is Carlos Cid, but everyone in the electronic music world knows him best by CID, a DJ and producer extraordinaire hailing from New York City. What you may not know about this man is that despite the growth and impact he wants to continue to make on this industry, he’s already won a Grammy Award. Pretty darn impressive! And he’s not stopping there by any means. Join us as we take a deeper dive into the world of CID.

Raver Magazine: So you’ve got a new track out that we love called “Believer” with Ceelo Green. Whose idea was it to turn the video into a cartoon?

CID: We were tossing around a few ideas and the song is very upbeat and positive so that was one of the themes that my team and the Big Beat team had. We just went with it and it ended up being such a cool process going back and forth with the designers for the way the characters should look. In the end, we’re all really happy with how it came out.

Raver Magazine: What’s the history behind how this track came about?

CID: Lately I’ve been writing a lot with different songwriters. This track, though, was one that the record label showed me. Originally, it was not a house record at all and I took it and put a soulful house spin on it. We worked with it for a while and now it’s an awesome experience to finally see it come out and see peoples’ reactions to it.

Raver Magazine: We see you’ve been traveling a lot lately and just got back from Europe. How has life on the road been treating you?

CID: It was an awesome experience! I’ve been fortunate to have become great friends with the group at one of the best clubs in Barcelona, so the last couple of years they have brought me out. My family lives in Spain, so this year I was able to connect with them a lot. The show in Alicante stood out the most. It’s out on the water with a big open stage. I ended up playing four hours and that’s the great part about Europe, especially Spain, that you can just keep playing. There’s no curfew and in that sense, I think that Europe was a great experience to be able to play there.

Raver Magazine: From Spain to New York City – your current hometown crowd – how was it playing in front of them at Electric Zoo?

CID: Oh it was crazy! Electric Zoo was the first festival I ever went to as a fan back in 2010 and I just remember really enjoying it so much. To be able to experience it now as an artist is really special. I remember looking back a couple of months ago at some pictures of mine and found a selfie of myself with the stage behind me. I zoomed in and it was Kaskade playing. It all came full circle that back then I didn’t know him at all and to see the progression up to today is just awesome.

Raver Magazine: You’re working with so many talented artists these days. If you had to pick one for a future project, who would it be?

CID: Kaskade has just shown me so much love – I would really love to do something else with him. My next single is actually going out on Don Diablo’s label, Hexagon, which I’m really excited about. We’ve started working with a couple of ideas that hopefully we’ll be able to put out to the fans soon.

Raver Magazine: You’re a Grammy Award winner [for production with Cedric Gervais’ remix of “Summertime Sadness”]. What’s next to tackle in this industry? What are you pursuing in life?

CID: I use my success as benchmarks for my progress. This year I played the 2pm set time on Main Stage at Electric Zoo. Next year I’m hoping for a set time later in the day. I really want to start building as an artist with the fans, put out a lot more music, really grow and be able to sell out my own shows. That’s where I want to go.

Backstage with Sam Feldt in NYC – Exclusive Interview

INTERVIEW BY STEPHANIE PIEDRAHITA

Sam Feldt is one of the most focused, consistently impressive and passionate artists in the dance industry. He’s an artist that takes pride in his work and has a deep respect for culture that supports it back home and across the globe. As a producer, he displays a willingness to push the boundaries by introducing his elegant, light melodic sound into the mainstream. As a DJ, he pulls in a crowd of people who go insane over his performances with the Sam Feldt Live Band. Truly, he can out shine all the lights in the room…his future is just as bright.

We got to sit down with the Dutch deep house DJ/Producer back in July before his gig at Marquee in New York City. Here is what he had to say concerning the direction of dance music and his growth creatively over the past five years. Enjoy!

You premiered your new song ‘Fade Away’ with Lush & Simon and singer INNA on your radio show Heartfeldt Radio recently, how did it come about to make this track together? How do collaborations usually come about?

For this collaboration specifically, it as Lush & Simon who initially sent me the basic idea of an instrumental, which is the guitar part of the song actually, then I just got cracking with it and made the drop. I thought “Cool, we need a good vocal now” and wrote it together with Leon, a good friend of mine from the Netherlands. Then we thought “Now we need a good vocalist” and it had always been a dream of mine to work with INNA, she has a lot of of hits and a great summer style that I thought would match perfectly with my style of music. So yeah, I reached out to her and she was really happy to sing it for us but a collaboration could come about in a lot of different ways. Hook & Sling worked with me on my latest single, it was a lot different because the vocals were already there. Also because there’s a bigger distance between me and Hook & Sling in logistical terms. He lives in L.A., I live in Amsterdam so we work digitally together so yeah, they could come about a lot of different ways.

Do you usually lay out the track first and then try to find people that fit that sound or have you reversed engineered the process?

It really depends, right now I’m working with vocals because then you know you have a really strong acapella to start off with. I’ve done it the other way around, like making the instrumental first like in Fade Away for example, but then you could have 30 people writing on it and only one comes out good. It’s a lot of waste of time for some different parties involved but if you start of with a really strong vocal, then usually the process of creating the track is a lot shorter. So it would be definitely be faster to complete a track that way. Yeah, if you start off with a strong vocal it’s easier to build a great track around that but you could also create a really good track and then find a vocal that is just as good or even better than that. Sometimes it could be a hit or a miss, sometimes you have 30 misses but then you get the one hit.

Photo by Deni Kukura

Speaking of vocals, you actually include a lot of live elements in your performance. You bring out singers sometimes but more recently, you’ve brought in saxophone players. Should DJs and artists start incorporating live music more into their performances than focusing stage production?

Well, I think both are important. I started the Sam Feldt Live Band a year ago, so right now we have a trumpet, a saxophone players, me playing live and we’ll be adding a guitar by the end of the year for the album tour. Ultimately, both are important…My background is also in graphic design so I will not argue that visuals aren’t important. Stage design, special effects…but everyone can do that though. Anybody could put up a big amount of money and hire a graphic designer to make cool visuals or pay a lot in production and get flames the entire set. It’s a matter of money. The bigger the artist, the bigger the production is going to be. I think for smaller artists, up and coming ones, placing live elements or playing live yourself can really make a huge difference in terms of energy in your set, in terms on uniqueness and taking it to the next level. I also think in general at festivals, people are getting tired of seeing a DJ walk on and off the stage, it’s happening over and over again and I think once you bring live elements it becomes more of an act than just the DJ. Fans are looking for an experience and want to be like “Wow, this is from start to end an experience” and not just some guy playing some records.

You’re doing your tour right now but do you have any projects coming out soon?

So I released my track with INNA. I released a track with Akon who is a really big American Hip Hop/ R&B artist, which is something new for me so it’s going to be interesting to work with these kinds of vocals and still keep it “Sam Feldt”. I think we managed to do that and I think it’ll be a big hit. These two songs are going to be on my new album which is dropping in October with a lot of exclusive new Sam Feldt music so that’s musically what’s coming up over the summer. The U.S.A tour, did Europe in June, doing Ibiza like ten times and I just finished performing two weekend at Tomorrowland. So, I’ve been touring going on but on the sidelines theres an album that’s coming.

I think it’s safe to say dance music has increasingly gotten popular in the past five years even though dance music has a very long history before that, how do you feel this rise in popularity has affected this industry and you personally?

I think what’s cool right now is to see that the U.S. is developing their own dance music culture. Before, four or five years ago, there was a lot of importing of European artists and listening to that kind of music. Now you see genres like Bass House, artists like Marshmello, Jauz and all these other great American artists rising up and doing well internationally. It wasn’t like that before, there were only like a handful of artists that went from the U.S. to Europe five years ago and now it’s so many. So, I think it’s also really cool you guys are developing your own scene, artist and music and as a DJ from Europe, to play in the U.S. is always such an honor and also a great pleasure because the crowds are all insane. If you compare the crowds in America with the crowds in Europe…well, you can’t really compare it. It’s like, I play a track here and until the very last track people go crazy, dancing and jumping. In Europe, it’s a lot harder to get people moving, but then they’ll drink a couple of beers and start grooving. It’s also because we’re used to dance music over time, so I think we’ve gotten a bit more snobby about it. It’ll be like “Oh it’s just Afrojack playing, I’ve seen him ten times already” you know? I hope that’s not what’s gonna happen here in the U.S. Oh I hope not! Yeah, I also see it as an opportunity for artists to keep themselves interesting and reinventing their sound.

Let’s say one day you woke up and wanted to change your sound entirely, would you back back to dubstep and electro like when you first started your first project or would you consider something outside of this genre?

Well, I’d rather stay where I’m at right now cause I’m loving the music I’m playing right now and love performing with the band. So first and foremost, I’m really happy with what I’m doing. Another genre I have a really big interest in is techno. For example, the last show I did in San Fransisco, I did a Sam Feldt live show and then I did an after hours party where I played techno. Still, I overdue that sometimes but I think it’s cool to experiment with other types of music.

The full interview is published within the newest edition of Raver Magazine, go check it out!

One show, preferably early in the tour, to record and playback on air to further promote the tour. Interview on SXM Chill when in the area to further promote

SiriusXM Chill Presents all the tour dates, or as many as possible, excluding any that may already have local radio presents.

SiriusXM logo, Chill logo, and “Presents” will be included on the ad mat for the dates we will present, as well as on tickets and the venue marquee.SiriusXM Chill Presents will appear in connection with the dates we will present on Thievery Corporation website and socials, as well as on ticketing sites:

Gearing up for their North American Tour this Fall, THIEVERY CORPORATION have announced the “Ultimate Tour Experience” for select fans to enjoy their mesmerizing live shows in a whole new and exclusive way. In collaboration with PledgeMusic, the band will be giving a handful of lucky fans the opportunity to experience their shows up close and personal. These access passes are available now at: http://pmusic.co/39vXkb

We are doing something we call the Ultimate Tour Experience where only 10 people per show will get to watch us from either the photo pit or the side of the stage,” said the band in a statement. “Each venue is different and some don’t have room on the stage or don’t have a pit area but don’t worry, you will get the best access we can grant. You will also get VIP passes to come watch our Soundcheck before the show. This is something we have only done once before and we liked it, so we thought we would try it again. Soundcheck is the place to go for the chance to hear the band try new things out before the show.”

In addition, the band will be offering the opportunity for two fans from each show to be in the photopit as the “Official Thievery Corporation Photographer”, where they will be able to get in front of the action to take pics and share their pics on the band’s socials with proper photo credit. The PledgeMusic campaign will also offer a limited number of signed items like set lists for each show, posters, vinyl, and more

This tour also features the U.S. debut of Jamaica-based vocalist RACQUEL JONES who co-wrote and sings on “Letter To The Editor,” the first single and video from the latest album, The Temple of I & I. Racquel has been performing with Thievery Corporation for most of 2017 and made her debut with the band on their 15 city European tour this past February, but because of a very slow visa approval process in the U.S., she was unable to perform with the band until now.

Infused with the culture and rhythm of Jamaica, Thievery Corporation’s latest album The Temple of I & I is an extension of the dub ethos and aesthetic that they’ve harbored since their debut EP Sounds from Thievery Hi-Fi, except this time, they dove headfirst into the rich and warm musical environs of Port Antonio, Jamaica and surrounded themselves with the island’s magic.

“The Temple of I & I is a place of worship that exists only in our imagination; a place where all people are chosen people and the unity of living things is possible,” explains Hilton about the album’s title. “So much of the world is divided into tribes and belief systems that have imprisoned people’s consciousness and allowed a few to control the many. Culture can be a blessing and a curse. Humanity transcends tribe and culture. This has been a constant theme in Thievery Corporation’s message since day one”

Tens of thousands of animals converged onto Randall’s Island over Labor Day weekend to celebrate their love of dance music underneath the famed New York City skyline. This year, we experienced beautiful weather, as well as total downpours; the famed plush blanket of green grass, as well as mud puddles galore. No matter what though, we found the beauty in it all and gathered with new friends and old to dance all day and night. We even saw a select few brushing up on their puddle jumping skills!

Each year this festival just gets better and better. One change this year that we greatly enjoyed was the demise of “EZOO Bucks”. The festival is cashless, which is something we always loved (less things to stuff into your pockets!), but the former island currency was just plain confusing. This year everything was in dollar amounts so it made adding money onto your bracelet very simple because you were able to guesstimate a lot better for how much you thought you would spend at the festival. We’re here for the music, not for the math games!

We loved the stages this year and how they really incorporated New York City into the designs. The hospitality was top notch – always full of friendly faces happy to help. EZoo has some of the best choices we’ve seen for food vendors and this year did not disappoint at all. Although we admittedly did not venture farther than our beloved Big Mozz, there truly was something for everybody to enjoy. And the talent? We heard repeatedly from festival-goers throughout the three days that this was simply the best lineup the festival had ever had. And we just have to agree with everyone on that!

Top 5 Sets

Armin Van Buuren

No surprise here – once again this man stole the show! Armin seems to have completely perfected the art of grabbing his audience and telling us all a beautiful story through his sets. We came ready for A State of Trance and Armin gave us that and so much more, even giving nod of appreciation to those New York fans who had followed him since his career starts in the city that never sleeps.

Deadmau5 & Eric Prydz

Two legends in a b2b set to close out this festival…all we had to say was “hit me with those laser beams!” The visuals were spot on and the bass was heavy and this set was jam-packed with 90 minutes of pure techno heaven.

Above & Beyond

What’s more beautiful than experiencing an Above & Beyond set? An Above & Beyond set in the rain. The visuals amidst the rain created a glitter-like effect above the loyal crowd who braved the cold and rain to experience this masterpiece of a set. The trio has had some run-ins with the rain in a number of other festival appearances this year, but we think the EZoo crowd was lucky to experience the beauty that the rain brought to this set.

Tritonal

Being self-admitted Tritonians, we were super excited to catch this set. We had such a blast during their set that we decided to catch them for round 2 as they headlined Marquee for an after party Saturday night. Marquee is always a fantastic time. Add Tritonal to the mix and we knew we were in for an awesome party!

Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano

WHOA. This set completely defined ‘Sexy by Nature’! Sunnery and Ryan really came to party today and they had the whole crowd grooving. It’s all about the energy and these two meshed perfectly with the crowd. We had the opportunity to catch up with the guys after their set – be sure to read up on how they come to truly defining their sets.

One by one the animals retreated off the island at the end of the 2017 installment of EZoo, bringing with them many memories made on the island during the weekend, as well as some muddy shoes that would likely need some cleaning. One thing is for certain – we can’t wait until Electric Zoo opens its doors to us all again!